Monday, January 26, 2009

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, I couldn’t resist trying for a bit of humor to brighten your day.

To catch up on the background, and see more of these, read “The Millennials are Coming…”. You will quickly understand that we in business are facing a new generation of workers who come from a world that is alien to businesses today.

You might be a millennial if…

1. When you pitched the great new “mashup” technology to the CEO, you couldn’t understand his strange comment about a train wreck.

2. You are bummed that your HR Department didn’t give you a trophy for surviving the first week at work.

3. You suspect the customer service department does something sexual.

4. You made a bumper sticker on the office laser printer for you mom’s car, proclaiming “My kid made the office honor roll!” so she could replace the faded one she has now from your high school days.

5. You quit your last job in protest, because the IT department blocked your access to Facebook at work.

6. You created a business plan for your new startup from a series of text messages to yourself, because you can type faster that way.

7. You think this company should stop its embarrassing focus on making money, and concentrate on things that create real meaning in the world.

8. You had to race out of the office early on Friday to hang with your bff (best friend forever), and someone on the team had the nerve to complain to your boss.

9. You just started a blog to gather requirements for that enterprise CRM package your company plans to develop.

10. You were so upset at a recent project overtime suggestion that you decided to update the CEO with a quick text message “idk imho any overtime is just mean atw tia ttyl”.

You also might be a millennial if all these points strike you as intuitively obvious. See more of these published previously. This is so much fun that I might make it a regular offering, if you help me out with some new points. I’ve always believed that there are serious messages that we can learn from every bit of humor.

6 comments:

These are funny! But be careful - every generation is shocked by the "lack of work ethic" of the incoming workforce. I can only image what your first boss was most worried about. The Millennials will have strengths that will work in your favor, as you noted in "How to Manage Millennials in Startups." As always, being a good manager means working with different employees' strengths.

Here's one for you:You might be a millennial if your best business ideas come to you while lurking non-job-related websites.

Thanks for the comment, and the contribution...The concern I hear from business is more than work ethic - it's total unpreparation for the real world. With this recession, I forsee some painful days ahead for millennials.

As a millennial, I'm proud to say I haven't quite out of network blocks placed on Facebook or gathered requirements for an enterprise CRM.

But, I'll admit that I got our CEO and a handful of VPs to use Twitter ton share updates to prospects, customers, employees and more. Or perhaps, enabling our customers to comment and engage with us on our company blog.

Some of the best business ideas come from passion. If someone's passionate about being kicked in the groin on YouTube, let them. If someone's passionate about drinking wine, let them. If someone is passionate about writing, let them.

I take a slight bit of offense that if someone isn't surfing "job related" web sites, they can't create spectacular business ideas.

Am I a pre-Millennial if I don't want to be a Gen-Y or Gen-X but think like a Millennial? I found you doing a search on small business CRMs. I'm a big fan of Infusionsoft so if your followers/readers would like info on the Infusionsoft CRM / marketing automation platform I'd be happy to chat.